Greensburg, KS

October 05, 2013

The green building movement doesn’t have one founder—it has several. One of them, without question, is Bob Berkebile, a founding principal at BNIM in Kansas City. In the 1990s Berkebile was part of the small circle of architects, designers and businesspeople who helped create the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program. He served as a delegate at the Earth Summit in Rio. Later, he took certification a step further and created (with Jason McLennan) the Living Building Challenge, a vigorous standard that exceeds LEED Platinum and serves as both aspiration and model.

My conversation with Berkebile is the second installment in The Next Building Environment Today series, a collaboration between Metropolis magazine and Architecture 2030. Each month I interview an internationally recognized leader in the green building movement. Here Berkebile talks about the recent Bank of America controversy, his new concept of Urban Acupuncture, early efforts in China, and the Architecture 2030 Palette:

Martin C. Pedersen: You followed the controversy surrounding the Bank of America building in New York. What was your take on the New Republicarticleaccusing the building of being an energy hog?

Bob Berkebile: I don’t know all the facts, but the early responses suggest that it’s being compared unfavorably to the Empire State, but that’s still relatively empty and Bank of America is full. Again, I don’t know the facts. What I do know is, when a system is undergoing change—and I would argue that LEED has created more change in our industry than any other single thing in my professional career—when that amount of change occurs, there are always pushbacks. Several months ago US Today did two feature articles, saying that LEED is broken. When you look at the overall energy numbers, buildings have improved significantly. But the LEED system, as it has matured, is a like a natural system. Are you familiar with the S-curve that defines the vitality over time of a natural system?

MCP: No.

BB: It’s a very interesting. Let’s take, for example, an oak forest. You have an X- and Y-axis. The vertical is vitality; the horizontal is time. You plant an acorn, and initially that s-curve is below the line, because it’s taking nutrients, taking resources from the soil, water and sun, and not producing anything. As it becomes a tree, then it starts being productive. It’s sequestering carbon, managing water, sharing nutrients with other plant systems. As time goes forward that S turns up and becomes a steep incline as it increases its contribution and vitality. Then as the forest matures and gets to the climax phase, the line starts bending down again. So the graph looks like an S on its side. Then what happens in a natural system is something modifies it, like fire, and that regenerates the forest, and restarts the S-curve. That might be where we’re at in the green building movement. READ MORE >>

December 26, 2011

Nearly five years after a massive tornado leveled 95% of Greensburg, KS, the town has become a living laboratory and a proving ground for emerging environmental technologies.

The non-profit Greensburg GreenTown has been the educational resource for the community, working side-by-side with city and county officials, business owners and local residents to incorporate sustainable principles into their rebuilding process, while also serving as a conduit through which donations can be distributed.

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Now GreenTown is now taking its award-winning blueprint for natural disaster rebuilding to help an even larger city, Joplin Missouri, which suffered a similarly hideous EF5 tornado this past May. The Green Earth PR Network has made a contribution to help GreenTown Joplin in its efforts to:

construct a series of eco-demonstration homes,

establish eco-lodging for people that want to visit Joplin, and

author a handbook to help guide future victims of natural disasters embrace a sustainable approach to recovery. READ MORE >>

May 14, 2010

Three years ago, the town of Greensburg, Kan., was almost totally destroyed by a tremendous tornado. Ninety percent of the population became instantly homeless. Eleven people died.

Near Main Street, there is still evidence of the devastation: Piles of brick and debris, flat empty lots filled with a dusting of snow and dirt, skeletons of trees that once made up the beautiful arbor that this town was known for.

But there is also new growth: a super-energy-efficient City Hall made from reclaimed brick and wood; an art center powered by the sun and wind; and in the distance a home modeled on a geodesic dome. They're things you wouldn't expect to find in rural conservative Kansas.

May 04, 2008

In the year since an F-5 tornado tore through and leveled the small Kansas town, Greensburg has gained the world’s attention for its plans to rebuild green – very green. On this, the one-year anniversary of the event, the town has attracted major media, documentary filmmakers, photographers, universities and some of the top sustainable design firms in the country. Greensburg, the Series, with Leo DiCaprio will even debut next month on the Discovery Channel’s new “Planet Green”.

There are a growing number of Web sites and other resources devoted to the green rebuilding efforts there. Here are a few:

Greensburg GreenTown, a nonprofit organization established after the tornado to funnel resources and expertise into creating a model green community.

Discovery’s new Planet Green channel begins its 13-part series in June, documentating the daily struggles of a community and its citizens through this massive reconstruction effort.

Kansas City’s BNIM was selected as the city’s master planner, to rebuild Greensburg around the principles of economic, social and environmental sustainability. Since then, BNIM has been retained to design the City Hall and Big Well Museum.

City of Greensburg, Kansas, which recently approved a resolution that all city building projects will be built to LEED Platinum level standards.

Studio 804, a design/build program at the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Planning, is building a “Sustainable Prototype for Greensburg, KS”.

Greensburg Cubed is a project of Design + Build @ Kansas State University, College of Architecture, Planning, and Design to build several small-scale modules demonstrating sustainable structures, systems and materials.

April 26, 2008

As the one-year anniversary of the Greensburg, Kansas tornado approaches, Architectural Record's"Greensburg Aims for a Platinum Shade of Green" reports on master planning, the upcoming Discovery Channel series and other recent progress by the city toward rebuilding as a completely sustainable community:

"BNIM associate Stephen Hardy, who, with colleague Rachel Weden, was largely responsible for the sustainable master plan, says of the LEED Platinum announcement, “While you wouldn’t pick western Kansas as a hotbed for sustainability, we’ve found that [Greensburg officials and residents] understand natural systems and have absorbed progressive green thinking much more deeply than their urban counterparts.” The master plan, which stresses walkability, water conservation and stormwater management, and citywide-wind power, also may contribute to the goal. Hardy imagines building owners opting into municipal wind power instead of producing their own renewable energy on site."

Also featured in the article are dramatic photographs taken by award-winning photographer Larry Schwarm, a native of Greensburg, whose one-man exhibition "Greensburg After the Storm" will be featured at Wichita State's Ulrich Museum of Art beginning today.

April 22, 2008

The Good Fight is a new Web series debuting today on SundanceChannel.com. Created and hosted by sustainability journalist Simran Sethi, each 'webisode' looks at "places where environmentalism is a necessity, not a luxury".

Their first video project focuses on the green rebuilding of Greensburg, Kansas, a community of 1,400 nearly wiped out by an F-5 tornado on May 4, 2007.

"Nearly a year after the catastrophe, dozens of FEMA trailers continue to dot a landscape of unbelievable devastation. However, the residents of this 1400-person town are coming back strong and rebuilding their homes, businesses and lives. This rebuilding effort is going green with the support of city officials, local business, and a burgeoning non-profit named Greensburg Greentown. All the reconstructed city buildings over 4,000 sq. ft. are required to be certified LEED-platinum, plans are underway for the entire town to run on wind power, and individual homes are being rebuilt slowly and sustainably.”

In five short videos (each two to 5 minutes long), Sethi provides a unique snapshot of Greensburg, describing how “...residents are transforming a crisis into an opportunity – and rebuilding green.” She interviews the mayor, business owners and at least one resident who is using a total energy solution package to rebuild his house 50 times more efficient than an EnergyStar-rated home. Also we meet Daniel Wallach, who created the Greensburg Green Town Rebuilding Project after the tornado. And the owners of Bucklin Tractor & Implement (BTI), a John Deere dealership that was completely destroyed but plans to rebuild LEED Platinum and serve as a model of sustainable construction for dealerships nationwide.

Read more about the series here and view Webisodes of "The Good Fight" here.

January 06, 2008

Planner/architect Bob Berkebile of BNIM Architects in Kansas City was featured in a special video presented at the annual Greenbuild Conference and Expo held in Chicago this past November. A few excerpts on his thoughts about ‘design integrity’, creating the first ‘climate positive communities’ and approaching our cities as living systems:

“I think we’re in a moment of enormous change...and one of those changes has to do how we imagine the future.”

“Every human being, every blade of grass, every wildlife...are all connected to each of these building decisions. So the breakthrough for me, and I think for all of us has been, let’s look at the entire system. Let’s start thinking of community as a living system.”

He also refers to the ‘first climate refugees’ resulting from Hurricane Katrina more than two years ago.

“In ’05, when a group of people from New Orleans following Katrina came to Greenbuild in Atlanta, through that experience we learned that following these disasters, the first inclination is to rebuild exactly what we had, exactly where it was, at the earliest possible moment. So the tension is for all of us to come together as a community and find a way to build the first climate positive communities that offer affordable housing and more vitality for the social, economic and environmental systems than were ever realized in those communities before the disaster struck.”

"More recently, in Greensburg, Kansas in May of this year, a tornado removed a community of 2,500 people from the face of the planet. And we have seen this week the city administrator from the City of Greensburg and the governor of Kansas and a host of others – the Discovery Channel who’s working with them – to try to create a community again that sets a new standard for rural American communities. If we look at our American rural communities, we find they’re all declining in population, economic vitality, etc. So how do we re-think that system and how do we build a community that is built entirely on renewable, regenerative strategies with energy, with water, with all of our resources and especially, the human resources that reside in those communities."

"If we’re going to approach our cities as opportunities for regenerative community building, we have to look at the city as a living system.”